Cooper City approves downsized mosque at growing Islamic prep school

City commission approved an amended site plan for an expansion of Nur-ul-Islam Academy and construction of a new mosque with a 50-foot minaret, after taller proposed heights drew criticism

A rendering of Nur-ul-Islam Academy and Islamic students

A rendering of Nur-ul-Islam Academy

An Islamic prep school in Cooper City won approval to develop a new building and a downsized mosque with a 50-foot minaret — half the height originally proposed.

The Cooper City Commission approved an amended site plan for the project during a marathon meeting Tuesday, amid complaints from residents about the traffic the expanded school will generate and the height of the minaret, a slender column that is a common architectural element of mosques.

Nur-ul-Islam of South Florida originally proposed four variances from building height limits to allow construction of a new two-story mosque topped by a dome with a height of 51 feet, and three minarets, two of them 70 feet tall and one measuring 100 feet.

At its Nov. 29 meeting, the city commission delayed its decision on the project after contentious and prolonged discussion. Nur-ul-Islam subsequently downsized the design of the mosque by eliminating two of the minarets and proposing one variance for a minaret that would be 83 feet tall.

But many of the citizens who spoke publicly at the city commission meeting Tuesday night criticized the proposed variance for an 83-foot minaret. “Everybody has the right to worship as they want, but we don’t need something like that in Cooper City,” said Heather Tanner, a resident since 1988 of the low-rise suburban city in Broward County.

“There is no precedent for this variance. Cooper City has never granted a height variance for any business ever,” said resident Scott Liebman. “If we start granting height variances for one business, we’ll have to grant them for other businesses, and it will quickly spiral out of control.”

The commission voted to reject the proposed variance for an 83-foot minaret, so Nur-ul-Islam pivoted by reducing the proposed height again, from 83 feet to 50 feet, negating the need for a variance request.

The commission ultimately voted at 1:30 a.m. Wednesday morning to approve an amended site plan for the mosque with a 50-foot minaret, subject to multiple conditions and confirmation of compliance by city staff.

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Among the conditions, Nur-ul-Islam is required to upgrade several streets near its school campus and to revise its site plan to include the downsized 50-foot minaret and an adjusted location for the planned school building, eight feet west of its original footprint, to put it more than 200 feet from residential properties, as required by code.

Cooper City annexed Nur-ul-Islam Academy, a 4.2-acre property at 10600 Southwest 59 Avenue, in October 2000, soon after Broward County entitled the site to a building height variance for a 100-foot “tower” and a 35-foot-tall mosque, both above the maximum height of 20 feet, according to a report by Cooper City staff. The approved height variance expired after 180 days.

That height variance expired because Nur-ul-Islam lacked funds to build a mosque with a 100-foot minaret in 2000, Husman Kahn, chairman of Nur-ul-Islam Academy, told the Cooper City commission on Tuesday.

“Even though in 2000 we had approval from Broward County to build a 100-foot minaret, we could not afford it, and therefore, we waited until we could afford it,” Kahn said. “We thought we had a gentleman’s agreement with the city to honor what we got [from Broward County] when we were annexed, and that would be grandfathered in.”

Nur-ul-Islam Academy, a private school serving students from pre-kindergarten through grade 12, plans to increase its enrollment by about one-third, from 425 to 560 students, by adding a new building that can accommodate 135 more students.

The new 14,055-square-foot school building will have ground-floor covered parking, recreation space on the second floor, and middle school classrooms on the third floor. The new building will increase to 51,600 square feet the property’s total school space.

Stephen Ross, the billionaire founder of Related Companies and owner of the Miami Dolphins, recently put Cooper City in his sights, paying $55.5 million for the Monterra affordable rental housing complex at 2601 Solano Avenue. The sellers, ZOM Living and NRP Group, completed the 300-unit, garden-style apartment complex in 2012 and financed the construction through Low-Income Housing Tax Credits.